Monday, July 19, 2004

Saturday. The LTLP suggested that we go to see ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’.

I was shocked. I had understood this film to be about America’s first special needs president, and to feature neither a Harrison Ford/Sean Bean/Arnie type action hero, nor any form of kooky love interest.

I checked the listings for the local independent cinema, the Fakenham Hollywood. But hard as I scanned, I could not find it anywhere. It was just not being shown.

This was puzzling. I thought about it for a while. And then felt sick to the stomach as I the truth dawned.

The cinema depends on the town council for licensing etc. And this is the town council that is funded by the County Council, that is in turn funded by the Treasury, run by Mr Blair and his powerful coterie of friends, including Mr Bush!!!

Truly this is one film that they do not want you to see.

This meant going much further afield to find a renegade outfit willing to make a stand for the little guy. Thus we found ourselves at the UCI multiplex for the matinee performance.

Even Halliburton’s tentacles do not stretch as far as Norwich.

I don’t go to the cinema much. The last two films I saw were ‘Shaun of the Dead’, which was good, and ‘School of Rock’, which was desperate. I don’t find the cinema experience awesome enough to warrant sitting through average movies.

I enjoyed ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’. Everybody likes having their prejudices confirmed, and it was nice of Mr Moore to make a whole film entirely for my benefit. It had big peaks and big troughs and was perhaps a better story than it was a movie.

I’d go along with Inspector Sands’s mini-review at Casino Avenue. And I'd add that the two most powerful scenes top and tail the film.

At the start, after being reminded of the bitter controversy and division of the US election result, we see again the angry demonstrations as the inaugural presidential motorcade is pelted with eggs.

And you guess that it would only be a fool and a bully who would go on to lead a government that wasn’t based on consensus and healing.

And right at the end, a passer-by confronts Michael Moore, as he films a bereaved mother in front of the White House. “This is a set up!” she screams. “It’s a set up scene!” She clearly thinks that the mother is an actress, demanding to know where exactly in Iraq her son was lost.

The passer-by was brave to interfere. And she was totally, utterly, completely sure that she was right.